Tony Greenstein | 05 June 2024 | Post Views:

No-one was happier than me when, in June 2017, Lloyd Russell-Moyle gained Brighton Kemptown for Labour with a majority of nearly 10,000.

In happier times

I had canvassed and delivered leaflets for Moyle throughout the campaign despite the fact that in March 2016, I had been suspended from the Labour Party as part of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt. It was despite the fact that Moyle had secretly written to the Labour Party’s witchhunters urging that my expulsion be sped up. And not withstanding the fact that the local Labour Party, which Moyle chaired, had urged my reinstatement.

When I received evidence, via a Subject Access Request, that Moyle had been writing to the Labour Party nationally, secretly and without telling anyone he wrote back on 23 August 2016 informing me that:

I am of a firm belief that one should say things publicly which are kind, and if you are unable to say that then one must be quite [sic] and say nothing on blogs and social media, esp about members. This is relevant when it comes to other members. I believe that attacking other members for taking (what you might believe is the wrong view) publicly brings the party into disrepute and it is an attempt to intimidate people from not saying anything.

Admirable sentiments to be sure, but not quite at one with his subsequent actions! Nonetheless I accepted his ‘half apology’. I later discovered that Lloyd had posted abusive comments about me on Facebook! 

UK Lawyers 4 Israel Attacking a Barrister’s Right to Free Speech

I was the first Jewish member of the Labour Party to be suspended and then expelled as part of the false‘anti-Semitism’ campaign orchestrated by the genocide supporters of the Jewish Labour Movement. Although I was the first Jewish member to be expelled I was by no means the last. Today if you are Jewish you are 5+ times more likely to be expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ from the Labour Party than if you are not Jewish.

Lloyd’s suspension as a candidate clearly came as a surprise to him. Just last week he wrote to me, as one of his constituents, saying that now the election has been called he ‘will become the Labour and Co‑operative Parliamentary Candidate for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven.’ But it was not to be.

The claims by Starmer’s apparatchiks that Lloyd was suspended because of an 8 year old complaint are risible. If the complaint has taken so long to be submitted it clearly must be suspect. There was nothing to stop the Labour Party allowing Lloyd to stand whilst at the same time investigating this complaint.

50 people turned up to a rally in support of  LRM

Yet what was Moyle’s reaction to his removal as Parliamentary Candidate?  Unbelievably he issued a statement in which he said:

I wish Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, and the Labour team the best of luck and hope to be celebrating Labour wins across Sussex and beyond on election night.

One can imagine Moyle advising his executioner about how best to chop off his head and at the same time suggesting he put in for a payrise. Uriah Heep has nothing on Moyle.

Of course when it comes to members of the Labour Right Starmer has been extremely tolerant. Only this week Elaine Cohen, a Jewish member in Birmingham, resigned because Starmer had allowed Khalid Mahmood to be a member of the Shadow Cabinet despite him having covered for his lover and office manager’s sadistic abuse of domestic violence victims.

The evidence of domestic violence and abuse was not challenged at Cohen’s employment tribunal case against Mahmood. Starmer also had no difficult in allowing two Shadow Cabinet members to remain in post despite allegations of sexual harassment against them.

Starmer had even less difficulty reinstating Neil Coyle MP who was suspended by Parliament for racial abuse of a British-Chinese journalist Henry Dyer, as well as genuinely anti-Semitic comments and bullying.

Clearly if Moyle had been a genuine racist as opposed to an ‘anti-Semite’, then he would have been waived through the selection process given that Starmer has a fondness for genuine racists like Coyle. The problem for Moyle was that he came from the left and then spent his parliamentary career in  a headlong retreat from socialism.

Lloyd Russell Moyle condemning Starmer

What probably did for Moyle’s parliamentary career was the last radical speech which he made, at the 2021 Labour Party Conference in Brighton when he declared that Starmer wasn’t fit to be leader of the Labour Party and his facial approval of his audience’s disdain, when he said that Starmer was a ‘nice man’.

Inexplicably Starmer’s chief genocidaire blocked me!

Yet, as I wrote, no sooner had Moyle apologised for supporting the purge of socialists from the Labour Party than he recanted! With Moyle it was a case of one step forward and a gallop backwards.

In 2020 the JLM attacked Moyle for comments he made in 2009, when he chaired the Woodcraft Folk, remarking that Zionism was a ‘dangerous nationalist idea.’  A perfectly innocuous remark you might think but the Labour left, including Corbyn and McDonnell, refused to recognise that Zionism was not some form of fluffy Jewish identity. It was an ideology and movement of ethnic cleansing and now genocide.

In response to the attack by the JLM, Moyle declared:

“I am completely and unreservedly committed to supporting [Labour leader] Keir Starmer and [deputy leader] Angela Rayner’s pledge to rid the party of antisemitism. I have met previously with the Jewish Labour Movement and will be reaching out to them again now,” 

It was on Palestine that Moyle capitulated. In 2018 he attended a solidarity party intended as a send off to the heroes of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. It included Divina Levrini, a principled Swedish musician – the complete opposite of Moyle. Despite being seriously ill Divina took part in the flotilla, being savagely beaten and deprived of her medicines by the sadists who form the backbone of Israel’s military police state. Soon after Divina died.

In subsequent years Moyle rowed back on his previous support for the Palestinians, denying that Israel was an apartheid state, opposing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions as well as supporting Starmer’s ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt of which he too is now a victim.

Irish MP Speech

I mention all of this because a friend in Brighton PSC, David Rogers, wrote to Moyle in June 2020 after being suspended from the Labour Party, asking for his support. In response his secretary wrote on 17 June telling David that

‘Lloyd believes that anti-semitism has no place in the Labour Party and is pleased to see Keir acting so proactively to demonstrate this.’

The implication being that David was anti-Semitic. David responded on 21st June telling Moyle that he found his response

‘chilling and sadly confirmatory of my fears that ambition and career advancement have overtaken principle and ethics.’

It was an abject surrender to the false and defamatory ‘antisemitism’ charge that he is now a victim of. Lloyd had long since abandoned all principles and ethics in a vain attempt to mollify Starmer and his cronies. All to no avail.

On 5 January 2024 Moyle’s PA, Chloe Farrant, wrote to David expressing Moyle’s opposition to the Boycott of Israel.

Lloyd is opposed to a policy of adopting BDS against individual nations and always have been. It wrongly singles out nations and is counterproductive to the prospect of peace.

There is a difference between applying consistent ethical principles in legitimate criticism of foreign governments and what, in recent years, some individuals and organisations have tried to do: seek to target Israel alone; hold it to different standards from other countries; question its right to exist; and equate the actions of the Israeli Government to Jewish people and in doing so, create hate and hostility against Jewish people here in the UK. That is completely wrong.

Presumably Moyle would have opposed sanctions against Apartheid South Africa for similar reasons and 90 years ago he would have opposed the Boycott of Nazi Germany alongside the Tories.

Note how Moyle equated sanctions against Israel with ‘hate and hostility against Jewish people here in the UK.’ Some would say equating British Jews with Israeli apartheid was anti-Semitic! But Moyle denied that Israel was an apartheid state despite copious evidence including reports from 3 human rights organisation – Amnesty InternationalB’tselem and Human Rights Watch.

When Netanyahu declared that Israel was “not a state of all its citizens” but solely its Jewish citizens, after the 2018 Jewish Nation State Law was passed, he was declaring that officially Israel was an apartheid state. Moyle however was having none of it.

Those miserable politicians who, despite all the evidence, refuse to call out Israel for what it is, deserve our contempt. Moyle was one such creature. He refused to accept that Israel was an Apartheid and now genocidal state, because it didn’t suit his career. A state where different laws apply to different ethnic groups is the quintessential definition of apartheid.

In the course of 7 years as an MP I have posted a number of blogs in respect of Moyle (see below). But despite this I would, albeit reluctantly, have supported his bid for re-election if he had stood as a socialist independent, because in my eyes a defeat for Starmer is the most important task in this election. The Tories are sunk but a hung parliament would be the best result of all. Yet such has been Moyle’s retreat that he is incapable of breaking free of his embrace of Starmer.

The issue on which I broke with Moyle and when I told him that I would not vote for him was over Julian Assange whom he refused to support. Although he refused to provide any reasons it is clear that they were related to the false allegations of rape that had been made.

statement from the former candidate for Brighton Kemptown, Nancy Platts, who was given an online interview in a bid to replace Moyle, revealed that during her interview Michael Crick tweeted that Chris Ward, a former adviser to Starmer, had already been selected by an NEC panel.

Clearly the whole ‘selection’ process, from which Kemptown members were excluded, was a charade. Platts had agreed to take on all Moyle’s employees thus avoiding redundancies. Starmer had other ideas.

Step forward Chris Ward of Hanbury Strategy, a group that lobbies for the gambling and fossil fuel industries. Ward was parachuted in as candidate over the objections of local members. This is the contempt that Starmer has for members. Before becoming leader Liar Starmer pledged to respect local democracy but like the rest of his pledges they have gone with the wind.

Faiza Shaheen

The other shock was the decision of Starmer’s Stormtroopers to deselect Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodgreen. Unlike Moyle she has made it clear that she is  prepared to stand independently and she has gone onto the political offensive, unlike Moyle. Contrast Moyle with Faiza. She has resigned from the Labour Party.

Also unlike Moyle it is clear that Faiza was dropped because of her support for Palestine. Her ‘crimes’ were based on 15 tweets from 2014.

One of the more recent posts she liked, and which was flagged by the NEC, was from 12 May 2024, where Philip Lemoine, a PhD candidate and writer at the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI), said:

“Every time you say something even mildly critical of Israel, you’re immediately assailed by scores of hysterical people who explain to you why you’re completely wrong, how you’re biased against Israel.”

Faiza poured her heart out in no uncertain terms and made it clear how callous and cruel was the decision to move her and the way it was done, whilst she was out canvassing.

However Faiza is no anti-Zionist. She is on the soft left. When confronted with ‘liking’ a tweet by a US academic who referred to the “Israel lobby” in a sketch on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show Shaheen’s “like” prompted a complaint from the JLM.

When asked whether she could see why the tweet was offensive, she said: “It plays into a trope and I absolutely don’t agree with that and I’m sorry about that.” What she should have said was that the Israel Lobby was a fact and there’s nothing wrong in pointing out facts.

When news broke on February 27 2019  that the staunch Palestinian supporter and opponent of the witch-hunt, Chris Williamson MP, had been suspended by the Labour Party Shaheen tweeted “*sigh of relief*”. One can only hope that now she has been subject to a similar injustice that she disowns that tweet and recognises what this minute scrutiny of social media for any disloyalty to Israel is really about.

Diane Abbott

A word should also be said about Dianne Abbott. She has been treated abysmally by Starmer but she has done herself no favours for demeaning herself. Abbot is not the heroine that many make out.  Politically she has rarely said anything about Palestine. I can remember a conversation with her at the beginning of her parliamentary career when she was extremely cagy about supporting their struggle.

Granted she is ill but the way to respond to Starmer’s racist treatment of her was to go tell him to go screw himself. Instead she begged and pleaded to be readmitted to the PLP. She even went on the JLM’s ‘anti-Semitism training’ which is nothing more than a course designed to equate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Diane should have refused on principle to go on a Zionist ‘training course’.

It would have been all to the good for Diane to have stood as a socialist independent and defeated the imposed Labour candidate.

Dianne Abbott has never recognised Zionism for what it is. A racist ideology in which ethnic cleansing is integral to its desire for a racially pure ‘Jewish’ state. Unfortunately her friend Jeremy Corbyn has also never bothered to understand what Zionism is about.

The Morning Star is right to call for the unions to call a halt to the purge. They have the numbers on the National Executive Committee but with racist scabs like Sharon Graham of Unite and Gary Smith of the GMB to say nothing of UNISON’s Blairite General Secretary Christine McAnea, this is highly unlikely. We need to replace the utterly useless scabs and war mongers in charge of our trade unions.

Owen Jones on Faiza Shaheen’s Defenestration

At this stage it is impossible to guess how this general election is going to turn out, other than the fact that Tories are unlikely to be returning to government.

My own guess is that there is going to be a very low turnout and I also suspect that Labour’s lead is going to shrink considerably. In a bid between the genuine Tories and the wannabee Tories the former will always have the advantage, despite their very low poll ratings at the moment. One thing I am sure of is that the projections at the moment of over 400 Labour seats may be wild overestimates.

Previous blogs on Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Lloyd Russell-Moyle is a Synonym for Lies, Deception, Treachery and Back Stabbing

No one Better Represents the Opportunism and Lack of Principle of the Campaign Group of MPs than Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Lloyd Russell-Moyle – the Double Barrelled Hypocrite who was imposed as Chair of Brighton & Hove Labour Party

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Tony Greenstein

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